Illumina, a developer, manufacturer and marketer of life science tools and integrated systems, has announced the pricing for BaseSpace, the company's genomics cloud computing and storage platform.

The flexible pricing structure will allow researchers around the world to take advantage of BaseSpace's data storage, analysis and sharing capabilities. Every BaseSpace account will now include one terabyte of free storage for Illumina data, enabling MiSeq system users to store hundreds of runs and HiSeq system users to store several runs worth of data, providing a risk-free means to get started with the cloud. Included with the one terabyte of storage is free alignment and variant detection for all Illumina data, eliminating what is currently one of the more costly steps in sequencing. BaseSpace users will also have the ability to purchase incremental storage from within BaseSpace, in both monthly and annual durations.

In the fall, through BaseSpace Apps, every BaseSpace user will have the ability to run analysis applications on an "as-needed" basis, developed by both open source and third-party developers. These applications can be purchased "on the fly" and per analysis, allowing users to affordably run new analysis strategies without investing in dedicated software or hardware infrastructure. BaseSpace Apps will include a diverse and growing set of industry leading data analysis and visualization applications for both MiSeq and HiSeq data analysis. The price for running a BaseSpace App will be set directly by each developer.

"Illumina is taking huge strides to eliminate the much publicized 'data deluge' and data analysis bottleneck. The adoption of BaseSpace thus far has been exciting to watch, with the vast majority of MiSeq systems now connected, and already half of those actively uploading data," said Alex Dickinson, senior vice president of cloud genomics, Illumina. "Making BaseSpace accessible to more researchers will have far-reaching effects, enabling more investment in understanding biology and less in processing data."

Already compatible with Illumina's MiSeq system, BaseSpace will become available for use with the company's HiSeq systems early in the fourth quarter of 2012, offering the same benefits of seamless real-time data transfer, assembly and variant detection for fast, high quality genome processing. BaseSpace Apps will also become available to customers in the fourth quarter.

Illumina's pricing plan for BaseSpace is effective immediately.